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Comment by outime | Hacker News Reader

The latest RPi prices were outrageous when I checked, so I started looking for alternatives. I ended up getting a pretty nice N100 with much more RAM, an actual SSD, and more - all for just a bit more money. It’s been performing really well, and I also use it for Jellyfin among other things. I couldn’t recommend the setup more.

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Haha, yeah. I went and bought a CM4 board with extra NIC so I could use an RPi as my gigabit router, and placed an order for a CM4 module (actually several) that didn't arrive until a year later (and they're still unused another 2 years after that). When it was obvious no CM4s were actually available from anywhere, I bought an N100 4 port router, and it's worked like a champ, comes with a decent enclosure and I could run VMs on it, and I can have a 1-WAN port and 3 ports going to a mini-switch in each room, so I don't even need an additional switch centrally. For me, it's far superior than the RPi solution would have been, well designed into a single case and around the same price.

Same, but with N97 (which is IIRC more powerful than the N100, because Intel is weird).

Wanted a travel NAS that would run on USB-C power. Thought about a Raspi5 + M.2 HAT + case. Checked the final price at checkout.

Bought a GMKTec Nucbox G7 instead. RAM is soldered in, but it has 12GB which is more than enough for the foreseeable future. 512GB SSD - again, more than enough and I can upgrade it later.

Now it runs Debian with a local Plex installation along with my Gl.inet router so I can get my series fix even if the internet is spotty when I'm traveling :)

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